This thesis documents the most recent effort to develop a
user-friendly image processing software package for the Laser Scanning
Phase Modulation Microscope (LSPMM). The LSPMM is composed of three
integrated subsystems, the Laser Scanning (LS) system, the Phase
Modulation (PM) system, and Digital Image Acquisition (DIA) system.
Under the control of the image processing software, the DIA system can
receive and store the digital image data, display the image on a
monochrome monitor, and process the image to provide the microscopist
with quantitative information regarding the image. The implementation
of this image processing software package required the specification
of a four level software hierarchy to serve as an organizational
framework, with the highest level interacting with the LSPM
microscopist, and the lowest level performing hardware control. This
framework should prove useful for the development and implementation
of additional software in the future. The programs that were
developed accept command line arguments; however, most will
interactively query the user if the command line arguments are not
known. This software provides the microscopist with the capability to
scan, save, and display a 512 by 512 pixel image. The image may be
scanned to, saved from, or displayed in either of the two DeAnza image
display memory planes. Considerable effort has been made to
incorporate all of the devices useful for image processing into a
single operating system kernel. This alleviates the problem of taking
down one operating system and bringing up another version in order to
dump image files on magnetic tape.

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